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I never felt safer than I felt these last three days at HLTH. A lot of the credit goes to HLTH and the process they put in and the team they brought together.

Today I speak with Mike McNamera from Impact Health who provided all the testing to create a safe space for our time together. Hope you enjoy.

Transcript
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Today in. Health it interviews from the health conference in Boston today, Mike McNamara on how impact health is making a safe space for us to collaborate. My name is bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this week and health it a channel dedicated to keeping health it staff current and engaged. Just a quick reminder, I'm going to be dropping interviews over the next couple of days. And into next week from the floor of the health conference.

Bill Russell:

All right. We have another conversation from the health conference health 2021. And today we are with, uh, Mike McNamara. The, are you the president and CEO of impact health? Sure, sure. I run things that impact health and I'm thanks for coming on the show. Absolutely. I, uh, I commented this morning on the show that the, the process, one of the first things you're you're faced with as you come to this conference, The process for making sure everybody is safe and we're all vaccinated, but they also put in the, the option for not often, but they put it in that process for testing. And your company is handling all that testing for the conference. Talk about, correct?

Mike McNamera:

Sure. So we actually, uh, from an intake situation, enterprise software solution, uh, for this type of program, we use clear we've partnered with them for. Many many programs we helped open up Vegas. MGM is a big client for both of us. Uh, the conventions system, uh, out of Vegas, even the state of Nevada. So it's, uh, it's a program we're quite comfortable doing. We can take it to large scale like this five, 10,000 people and put them through a process of testing. Uh, essentially clear would give you the green pass after you've had. Uh, there's so many platforms now for COVID testing, uh, to make an environment safe and to make this bubble the way it needs to be. Uh, today we're using an antigen test. Then we back it up with a confirmatory on essentially a PCR test that is portable out of the lab out of a high complexity lab. That's our confirmatory, uh, that takes 30 minutes. So if you walk in here, The test itself takes a less than 20 minutes. By the time we put you onto the app, the clear app and get you all connected in that manner. Some people actually get a test prior to coming here and that can go onto the clear app and they can get, uh, entrance that way. Or they get tested by our, our clinicians. Uh, we had 50 clinicians here yesterday. Got about 40 here today. 50 on a Sunday tested 2,500 people. That's a normal ramp for us. Uh, it's not unusual for us to do a thousand, 2000 walk-ups or drive-throughs 14 states. I mean, COVID has done certain things to certain companies. We're one of the companies that's exploded and we went from a 600 folks to over 20,000 healthcare professionals that work W2 for impact health on a nationwide. And, uh, it's been incredible and conferences like this. We love them. Um,

Bill Russell:

so conference, as I'm thinking through this conferences companies, uh, like MTM in the entertainment business, but also large scale companies that are now sort of grappling with this, this balance of, of testing on an ongoing basis and vaccines.

Mike McNamera:

Well, yeah. Today's date, uh, October 18th, correct? Right. So we're in the middle of a, what's the mandate going to be from our federal government when it comes to, uh, workers, uh, and companies with over a hundred employees, what are we going to do? How are we going to get them back to work? So, yes, I work with the largest companies in the country, uh, companies that have supply chain issues that need to get back, uh, working and getting people to. Uh, the microns of the world, um, premise is a client of ours and they have 50, 70 large scale, massive companies, the J and J's of the world Smucker's of the world. Right? So all those companies have got to get their people back in, and that's what we like to do. And it's for COVID vaccine. It's for COVID testing, it's getting home tests in the hands of the employees on a regular basis. It's observing that it's collecting that data, uh, so that we can communicate with the employer, uh, about their employees, uh, which they have to sign consent, to be able, uh, for us all, to communicate in that manner. We're not sharing their information with anybody we're just performing that service so that the employer knows yes. Uh, that person has been vaccinated or yes, that person has had a positive or a negative test so that, uh, work can go on and.

Bill Russell:

You know, it's interesting in Massachusetts and I know you're not a technology guy per se, but when I got here, a little thing popped up on my phone that said, Hey, would you like to know if you've come in contact with people who have COVID it's like in Massachusetts, they've set this, or at least in Boston, they've set this up. And I think part of that has to be somebody reporting, you know, positive tests is that. And we just tested all these people in Boston, you would say, Hey, here, here's the positive tasks in Boston would say, you know, these people, these phones have come in contact with this,

Mike McNamera:

right? So we're state to state on this and we report to CDC. We have to report to CDC and on these things. And as an example, in a conference like this, with people who are double vaccinated, and that's part of the opportunity to be able to come in here, uh, it's a very low. But when we do stop someone from coming in here, uh it's because they're positive and then confirm positive. And at that person would be able to enter into a location like this and that, that 10 people they meet. And then 10 people meet the people who met them. And you understand the math when it comes to this. So protecting the bubbles, important, communicating to the state and federal government, it's part of what we have to do from a regulatory standpoint, the licensure that we have to go through. UAS that have changed in the last weeks and months, you have to be updated in every state for reporting for, uh, permitting it's it's, uh, the logistics of this business are just staggering. It is, but it's part of what gives people that comfort that we're doing, what we should do to stem the tide,

Bill Russell:

the false positives. Do you worry about false positives or do you have. Confirming test.

Mike McNamera:

So the sensitivity, you know, I don't want to bore anybody with the math, but you know, the sensitivity is such that you're going to end up every a hundred people. You're going to end up with so many people that you've got a false positive. And the great thing about having the other S uh, science, uh, platforms that we have, their sensitivity goes up more expensive, a little longer time for. Uh, you know, to have that test process, but when you get the number of false positives and then can confirm that with one of these high quality tests, uh, you can feel very, very safe at that point. So

Bill Russell:

are you able to give any numbers on that? Like, you know, I mean, because everybody, everyone who's vaccinated right. Coming up here. That's I assume, felt healthy coming up here. Cause you have to fill out the right th the form that says, Hey, I feel healthy and whatever, even to get on a plane, you had to fill that out. Um, so I would imagine, you know, you'd have to have to have a breakthrough case. It would have to be a special case for someone to be positive here.

Mike McNamera:

Yeah. I would say that in these environments that we control and people have to enter the workers, uh, you know, all the way to the Teamsters who organized, you know, uh, the, the 400 boosts here. And, uh, everybody works at the conference center and the convention centers and the surrounding hotels. You know, we, we feel as though we can protect folks. We did that for, uh, for the previous administration. They were the only ones straddling for, uh, the summer and into the fall of 2020. And I recall we did over a hundred events for them and. That we know of, there was no super spreader event at any of those. A hundred plus events. Uh, Tulsa was a little, um, out of control. I didn't, I did not have control feature there. I only protected around, uh, the president, uh, who came to speak at that rally, uh, that area I know is, was safe and protected. And then the only place that we weren't allowed to in the country to test was the. So the white house had its own medical staff. So when Amy Coney Barrett was nominated for the Supreme court, we were not allowed on the white house grounds. That is the only place I know of in that previous administration, that a super spreader event actually happened and it can happen easily, but you got to have the right protocols in place. That was the white house medical involved. Um, you know, we were, we were testing other places for other events around that. That we weren't at the rose garden. And I think that's the only one that I know of where there was a superstar event during all of Trump's, um, campaigning and his previous administration.

Bill Russell:

So, so I'm curious, I mean, is this, this is your core business. What does your business look like? Moving out? I mean, will this, or do we see this pretty strong next

Mike McNamera:

year as well? You know, age doesn't mean anything it's it's, you know, how you feel, how you act, how you. And, uh, I I'm supposed to be in my retirement years and you know, this could have, you know, could have happened when I was 45 and not the age I am. But

Bill Russell:

so this really has led to a

Mike McNamera:

significant uptake in Dubai since it has. I mean, it's, I, it's not, it's not calculable, right. That the growth is, is, is staggering. Uh, you know, it's, it's. Bigger than a Facebook, right. It's just been kind of crazy. So, but in terms of what's next, I mean, rapid deployment of healthcare services at scale, that's the mantra and impact health. We can go anywhere. We've got great, got hundreds of people who are qualified. We can stand up a group in a matter of hours of FEMA. We have a contract with. They give us 72 hours, we're ready in 48 hours to go to any emergency in our country or in any of the us, uh, properties, uh, around the world. And it's, it's daunting and it's going to change. I can tell you that impact health has been nothing but a change company, uh, and have to adapt. I mean, when we had the dip in. And then the scale up for the Delta variant. So as someone who wants to build value and have my employees, uh, on a long-term basis, so that, uh, you know, we're, we're creating a good environment to work and to grow and prosper. And we've now turning our business into a staffing business, a staffing business with 20,000 dedicated folks. Who've got COVID. Nationwide. Uh, in an example in Florida, I've had over 1500 people working for me, just in the state of Florida in South Carolina last month, 63,000 days of employment for nurses based on the work we're doing in one state. So I think I'm a staffing company of rapidly deployed healthcare services. It's

Bill Russell:

Thank you very much for, for all the work that you guys did. Thank you. Thanks

Mike McNamera:

for the time.

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